Flying home after the Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) can be a sobering experience for me. After spending days learning about the latest and greatest in #PaxEx innovations, I often find myself in the oldest aircraft with the oldest cabins on the ride home from Hamburg. It serves as a reminder of what the real world experience in a 20-year old aircraft can be.

Thankfully, this time was different. I booked Finnair back to New York via Helsinki, my first time flying with the Finnish carrier in years. While the long-haul segment was booked in Premium Economy, the hop from Hamburg to Helsinki (HEL) in an Embraer E190 dropped me back to Economy.

I was a bit annoyed that despite the premium cabin connection, I was assigned boarding group 5, the last group to board. I was worried that my carry-on bag would be gate checked due to limited overhead bin space.

Boarding began right on time and to my delight the single gate agent working the flight made no attempt to wrangle anyone’s bag away.

Suddenly my anxiety melted and gave way to delight as I realized that despite the flight being operated by Finnair’s oldest E190, the twinjet had recently been fully refurbished for the first time in its service life.

Finally, I’d get to experience a brand new product on the way home from AIX!

Stepping on board the aircraft it was immediately clear that the interior was as fresh and clean as it could be. The entire aircraft, bathed in light beige and cream colors, was simply spotless.

While I don’t think Finnair swapped out the overhead bins to something larger than the stock configuration from two decades ago, I easily found space for my bag.

I made my way to my seat in row 23. The seat had been automatically assigned by the airline, as I had not paid the ancillary fee to have a choice. Why would I in such a lovely aircraft with a 2-2 seat configuration and giant windows?

Finnair has opted to keep its E190 fleet in a 100-seat layout, with slightly nicer seats in the first nine rows where business class (EuroBiz) resides.

Economy class seats are “pre-reclined” at 31 inches of pitch. Even as a relatively tall passenger, the living space was plenty spacious for me. Some recline would have been nice, but I didn’t find it to be uncomfortable during the roughly two-hour flight.

What was a letdown, however, was the lack of any modern niceties. No Wi-Fi of any sort is available, nor is USB or AC power at any seat.

Economy seats do have a tiny feature on the tray table that allows for a phone to be propped up, while it appears that business class seats have a proper eye-level device holder.

Passengers need to load up and charge up before flying, though. Finnair sends its E190s on routes pushing four hours so the lack of Wi-Fi, power and eye-level device holders down back will be missed by many passengers over the remaining life of this aircraft.

Finnair’s onboard shorthaul service is also extremely basic, with free items limited to only a cup of water or blueberry juice. All other items need to be purchased or pre-ordered,  but I don’t recall there being any sort of printed menu available to browse.

Information was available in the Finnair iOS app, but that makes impulse decisions a lot less likely (and without snappy broadband on board, another thing to consider pre-departure.)

I never would have known about the delicious iced vanilla oat latte coffee drink on my British Airways flight from New York to Hamburg via HEL without a printed menu to stare at.

While my return connection at HEL was nearly two hours, the airport famously touts the lowest minimum connect times in Europe. Though the flight blocked in two minutes early, it was at a hard stand that required bussing to the terminal.

This ate into the connection and I did not step foot in the terminal until 13 minutes after the scheduled arrival time. Combined with a 20-minute wait for EU exit processing, HEL is really starting to test the limits of what can be done in 35 minutes.

My Finnair E190 experience was perfectly fine for a short-haul feeder to a long-haul flight, but I do find the omission of modern necessities like USB ports and connectivity to be a big miss for an aircraft operating routes of material length, likely for many years to come.

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All images credited to the author, Jason Rabinowitz